Craig Hill
KC Hill
Paladin
Oracle of DelphiWhere to for the West? - Part 1
September 2nd 2006 21:35
When sitting down to write a new post I often ask myself 'What is the most important thing I could write about today?' After all, if I'm going to spend half an hour or so of my incredibly valuable time massaging the keyboard I might as well make the most of it.
www.spiked-online.com recently asked a number of thinkers to name the key challenges faced by the world in the 21st century were. Roger Scruton replied:
The key challenge for philosophy in the 21st century is to rid itself of phoney French nonsense of the Derrida, Deleuze, Badiou variety, to re-establish contact with the cultural and artistic traditions of our civilization, and to engage with the intellectual questions that really matter, concerning the nature and destiny of man.
In the next 18 years, society (i.e. Western society) should be addressing the issues of faith (whether, which and why), sex (whether, when and why not), food (what, why and where from), and children (whose and how many). If those questions are not addressed Western society will either die out or be Islamised: and which of those two fates is worse is also an issue that we should be addressing.
I find it difficult to disagree with these and thought it would be worth addressing some of the hard questions he raises. Let's start with
'sex (whether, when and why not)". This question is directly related to the warning Scruton gives that "Western society will either die out or be Islamised" because despite the fact of IVF, sex between a man and a woman is still the most popular means of producing future generations.
It is a well known fact the fertility rate in many Western Countries is below 2.1 births per woman. That is to say these countries are not producing enough children to ensure their survival. Current birth and fertility rates tell us something about how societies will fare in the future but the issue is complicated by age distribution of women and the life expectancy in each country. If country A has a high proportion of elderly women, a low fertility rate isn't as drastic as if the proportion of women in each age group is evenly distributed. A country with a high fertility rate and a low life expectancy is no better off than a country with a low fertility rate.
If we really want to get a fetch on what a country will be like in 2020 say we need to know an estimate of its total population, the proportion of its citizens which will be native born and the proportion which will be immigrants. More on this to follow soon.
www.spiked-online.com recently asked a number of thinkers to name the key challenges faced by the world in the 21st century were. Roger Scruton replied:
The key challenge for philosophy in the 21st century is to rid itself of phoney French nonsense of the Derrida, Deleuze, Badiou variety, to re-establish contact with the cultural and artistic traditions of our civilization, and to engage with the intellectual questions that really matter, concerning the nature and destiny of man.
In the next 18 years, society (i.e. Western society) should be addressing the issues of faith (whether, which and why), sex (whether, when and why not), food (what, why and where from), and children (whose and how many). If those questions are not addressed Western society will either die out or be Islamised: and which of those two fates is worse is also an issue that we should be addressing.
I find it difficult to disagree with these and thought it would be worth addressing some of the hard questions he raises. Let's start with
'sex (whether, when and why not)". This question is directly related to the warning Scruton gives that "Western society will either die out or be Islamised" because despite the fact of IVF, sex between a man and a woman is still the most popular means of producing future generations.
It is a well known fact the fertility rate in many Western Countries is below 2.1 births per woman. That is to say these countries are not producing enough children to ensure their survival. Current birth and fertility rates tell us something about how societies will fare in the future but the issue is complicated by age distribution of women and the life expectancy in each country. If country A has a high proportion of elderly women, a low fertility rate isn't as drastic as if the proportion of women in each age group is evenly distributed. A country with a high fertility rate and a low life expectancy is no better off than a country with a low fertility rate.
If we really want to get a fetch on what a country will be like in 2020 say we need to know an estimate of its total population, the proportion of its citizens which will be native born and the proportion which will be immigrants. More on this to follow soon.
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